1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of this invention relate generally to groups of devices that work together in a network and use security methods to protect their data and/or their network configuration. Embodiments of the present invention relate to the programming of security controls in the network, including passwords and security keys in groups of devices that are linked by local area networks, wide area networks, or combinations of the two. Various embodiments of the present invention can be utilized on a network based on any medium, wired or wireless, but will be described further herein in relation to a broadband power line network and/'or a local area network based on power line communications.
2. Background
There exist today many types of consumer electronic and enterprise electronic devices that work together as a group. For example, in a home theater, the iPOD doc, DVD player, surround sound system, and video display may all interact to provide entertainment. In a cell phone, the cell phone may contain a Bluetooth transceiver, which communicates with a Bluetooth earpiece. Typically, these systems are packet-based communications networks, where data is exchanged among a number of devices, based primarily on the actions being performed at any one of the devices. In today's home entertainment and related networks, the data can primarily be categorized into two main types: Control and request and content information (whether Isochronous or asynchronous). Content includes audio and video data of various formats (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG3, AVI, etc.) Control and request refers to data that relates to management and control of the audio and video streams including security aspects.
In recent years, there has been a great amount of interest in protecting this content data from copyright misuse or illegal distribution. The Digital Rights Management movement has significantly affected the entertainment industry, and the content users. In a related area, the Internet has been attacked by hackers who try to take information from the network or try to disrupt the networks. The general reaction to both of these types of problems is to impose a variety of security schemes that protect both content represented by the data in the network; and access to the network and/or the devices on the network. Security and privacy both require some type of secret, generally a secret password or a Key for encrypting and decryption the data. The art is mature with references to Private and Public keys that are used in encryption algorithms. The secret data has to be passed in a method that is trusted by all of the devices and users of the network. A lot of effort has been put on trying to make this complex process easy for the consumer to set up. One problem, for example, has been how to associate the cell phone with one and only one earpiece. Failure to do so, results in not being able to use one's personal equipment could result in ease dropping or theft of service. In this case, Bluetooth has a process whereby both devices have “associate buttons” that are activated at the same time thereby creating a short window of opportunity to associate. This short window of time is difficult for a hacker to anticipate so it is generally secure enough to secure the association process. In another method, a list of “willing” devices is displayed and the user is asked to select a device with which to associate. However, when the network is scattered throughout the house and the user is not within arms reach of each network device, this approach is problematic.